


Siren Song

by NevillesGran



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Pre-Canon, Siren!Vex, might adjust tags as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 17:36:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9282674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: Once upon a time, quite a lot of people were very lonely, especially these few. Don't worry - a bit of light music, some exciting misunderstandings and a couple evenmoreexciting fights, and they'll figure it out.(Or: the one where Vex is a siren, and Vox Machina forms a little differently than canon.)





	1. Cantata in Sea (Var.1)

**Author's Note:**

> (This is all but identical to a thing I posted on tumblr six weeks ago, but I have an entire fic planned-ish now so here it is again.)
> 
> Recommended listening for this chapter: ["Once Upon A December" (Instrumental)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ItGHg-FvQc)

He didn’t notice it at first, because the wind was whistling quietly as well, and a trickle of loss and longing could only disappear in the sea that was Percival. Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, though no one had asked his name in months…he had barely spoken to another living soul in months…he’d started out on a larger boat, he thought, with people, but it had been far too many people. It was easier to drift alone on the sea. Though now he wondered sometimes, when his thoughts sharpened enough to probe the philosophical, if there was any point clinging to a legacy that consisted of nothing now but those auxiliary syllables.

He clung anyway, and eventually rose from his lazy fishing position to turn his prow in the direction of the song. He had fled halfway to Marquet, but he could still test his curiosity on a melody from nowhere.

No, not nowhere – a young woman rested her arms on the water as if it were a steady table and sang as she watched him draw near. Surrounded by the sea. She was too far to see details, but his heart caught in his throat: her posture was Vesper’s, casually graceful and certain the onlooker knew it. Her ink-dark hair pooled off her head like Whitney’s after she disobeyed Mother and jumped in the pond by the eastern fields.

It hardly took the inviting lilt of the song; Percival rushed his dinghy forward, tacking against the slight wind and taking up the single oar to move faster. 

She smiled at him, winked, and turned and moved away. He couldn’t tell how (the very small part of him that still thought rationally pointed out that this was likely a dream) but she went quickly, still singing that haunting refrain. The smirk she shot him over her shoulder was Cassandra running away with a book she snatched from his hands, or Julius being particularly much an ass on the fencing mat. _Maybe if you ever practiced_ , he’d say, staying tauntingly out of reach and deflecting every one of Percy’s increasingly irritated blows. The only one with enough reach to beat Percy’s, though the way Ludwig was shooting up, that might—

Percival jumped in the water. This was the only way to catch her; it was the first thing he has been absolutely sure of in…. Since…

She beckoned like Mother welcoming him late to supper and he dove after her. Welcoming but with a faint sigh, amused chiding and resignation. _So what can we expect to explode during dessert this time, Percival?_ (It had only happened once, truly. Twice. He had gotten much more careful about the order in which he left his workshop since then.)

The water didn’t muffle the music; it transformed it to an orchestra, with more intensity of presence than Percival had felt in…some time. Maybe ever. He recognized every piece: his mother beckoned elegant as a viol, notes drawn then short. The deep bass was Father, distant and shrewd and constant as the mountains. Julius gentler, warmer, lighter, but to be just as adamant one day; anyone could see it, and his new wife’s clever contralto just starting to weave in. Commanding sharps were Vesper, perfectly in time but threatening to steal the tune. He could see them as the light faded overhead, see them all. The light was still there and so were they, alive and well in the Sun Tree courtyard, Whitestone shining in the sun just as before. Percy was the only one missing. Dancing pauses were Oliver, chased by Whitney’s firm strikes. Flutters were Ludwig’s first halting attempts at the lute, with Professor Anders looking patiently on (something _burned_ in Percival’s chest, even hotter and tighter than the muscles holding his breath.) Cassandra trilled through, play-acting again. The figure turned, pale in the dark, offered him her hand. Cassandra-

Three short, sharp notes and the melody, the memory, pulled forward. The water was snow-cold. Percival didn’t know if his baby sister had reached for him, if she’d watched him run away with heartbreak in her eyes. Now she did – but now he didn’t run. He swam on, back to her, giddy with reassurance.

“It’s okay.” The words didn’t sound; water filled his mouth instead, no relief to his straining lungs. He was so weary, weighed down by the ocean. None of that mattered: he has his sister’s hand. He could pull them both back to the sunlight. “Everyone is waiting. We’re going to be safe.” 

He struck upwards, tugging her along. Tried to. He was so tired, with struggle and longing. He couldn’t breathe. But there was no reason not to close his eyes in the darkness—he could see his family just as well. A sorrow-stricken face swam beside him but it was okay, he could go back. He could go _back_ ; he could save them all before anything ever happened. He didn’t need to keep breathing afterwards. It only, he thought very, very dully, hurt more…

.

Percival woke with a cough, one last vestige of water to spit from his lungs, but only one. He didn’t remember any others. Just a dream, a beautiful dream that hurt so, so much just to—

Perhaps not be over yet. There was a young woman clinging to his chest, sobbing into his shoulder. He appeared to have lost his shirt. So did she. Her legs as well—where they should have been, there was a massive fish tail, half as long as his body. They were tucked just above the water line into the seaward side of a rock he thought he recognized as sticking out of the water a couple miles from where he usually docked his fishing boat. Percival blinked very hard, several times. The situation did not change.

Except the young woman raised her head and looks at him. She was the one who had been singing, he was sure: the same languid grace, pale skin and ink-black hair. She was blurry, this close—he hadn’t worn glasses in some time. But she was none of his sisters, and certainly not his mother. Her hair was too dark, her nose the wrong shape, her lips too full for a de Rolo. Her ears were too pointed and her bottom half was a fish tail. 

“I’m sorry,” she gulped. She unwound one arm from his neck and dashed the tears from her eyes. “God, I’m such a shit siren. Can’t even drown one sad, little-”

Tears started to leak again, obvious despite the general dampness of her face. She was, Percival thought, likely the most objectively beautiful person he has ever seen. (He still wasn’t sure he was lucid at this juncture.) (To be perfectly frank, he hadn’t been quite lucid for well over a year. A year and a half?)

“Sorry,” she repeated. There’s a little more weight to it this time. “I just…” She shook her head. Water sprayed from her hair. “I really miss my brother, too.”


	2. Cantata in Sea (Var.2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vex'ahlia's point of view on events thus far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended listening for this chapter: [ "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, piano only](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSFpqWKvrHg)

Vex’ahlia was stupid. She was so, so stupid. The evidence was plain as day: every decision she had ever made, every turn she had taken and every word she had said, had been the wrong one, because they led her here.

“Here” was the middle of the ocean. “Here” was a fish tail for legs and a tug in her chest that promised it would hurt if she went much closer to land. “Here” was a deal she’d made was an archfey at the depths of the sea, because the alternative was that the Lady would kill her and, more importantly, her brother and her bear. (Technically, Trinket had been a shark at the time, still sniffing out danger, watching Vex’s back, and rubbing her skin raw thinking she could scratch under his chin like he still had fur.) Because she had made the stupid, _stupid_ decision that it would be worth the price of the polymorph spell and breathe-underwater potions to go investigate the ship full of treasure sunk fifty years ago off the coast of the Stormcrest foothills, and of course Vax and Trinket had followed her, and she had nearly gotten them killed.

Vax had stayed, best he could. But Vex couldn’t get closer than a mile to shore, and you couldn’t put a bear on a raft, and they’d made it work for nearly half a year anyway until Cytherea got covetous again, and decreed that Vex wasn’t to speak with anyone she didn’t promptly drag down for sacrifice. Under pain of the archfey coming up to take the victim herself. She didn’t like the surface, so she would be furious, and more than just Vax and Trinket would die.

As if Vex needed more threat than those two.

It took hours of arguing, threatening and cajoling and eventually just casting a spell to make them go. She had picked up a couple skills in that area, since making her deal. “Here” was Trinket huffing into her hand one last time as she made him promise to look out for himself and his uncle, and Vax’s eyes glazing over as she sang him back to shore in the clumsy little longboat he’d bought at a nearby fishing village. Sang him up the beach and down the road and safely away, shoving her heart and what remained of her soul into the most permanent earworm she could, because the waves were starting to toss and turn with her new patron’s anger. Trinket looked back and grunted at her in confusion, and Vex sang and waved him on and pretended the tears on her face were spray from the waves.

“Here” was the middle of the ocean, curling her tail slowly to keep herself afloat, rising and falling with the gentle waves and singing until her voice caught some new poor soul. Some sailor as stupid with greed and lust as she had once been; she would drag them down to die for the greedy bitch of a fey who had conceded, with sharp teeth glinting, to take her as a “handmaiden.” Day in and day out, Vex’ahlia fished for prey.

It was an odd soul that caught her net today. She almost felt him before she saw him—there wasn’t much to look at on the open Lucidian Ocean, but the little boat was so unfit for this far out that its owner had to either be insane or suicidal.

But his wanting was strong. Vex was tugged forward by the strength of it, as caught as he as her spell twisted up with his most desperate wishes. She stopped herself—smile and wait, that was the way to catch a man. She had known that long before she traded legs for a tail.

But this one wasn’t interested in what no longer lay between her legs, nor the treasures promised at the bottom of the sea. Desperation gaping salt-sore as the waves, he— _Percy_ , whispered the surface of his mind—just saw his sisters when he looked at her. She couldn’t tell which one; it flickered too fast. He had lost them all, his entire family (Vex could relate.). He wanted them back so _very_ badly.

So she sang them. She didn’t know how—she never did, really. It just worked. She plucked the desire from his heart and turned in into song, and as it passed through her voice (as she smiled and dove away from him, as he leapt in after), she saw, laid over the dark of the water, as he did. The parents tall and proud, the golden older brother and the clever older sister. The twins inseparable (her heart clenched), the youngest boy at his studies and the final laughing brat of a baby sister. Sunlight and warmth, a blossoming tree in a city of snowfall turned to stone.

Vex’s song changed as they reached the true depths, where the water has never known the sun’s warmth. They were near the end—he couldn’t possibly hold his breath much longer—so she turned back, reached out to catch his shivering form, and knew he thought they were in the snow for real, that she was that same youngest sister stretching for his hand. The girl had been barely older than Velora when she died.

Vex’s mind still did odd things with the senses she’d received out here. Percy’s hope tasted like cinnamon on her tongue, sweet and sharp and soon to be gone. He couldn’t speak with water flooding his throat but she could read his lips: _It’s okay_ , as he took her hand. _Everyone is waiting_. He clawed at the distant surface as he writhed and drowned and dreamed of his family alive in a shining city. Vex clutched him so tightly that her nails dug into his skin. _We’re going to be safe_.

Oh, _fuck_ it.

They were deep enough that he would get a headache from being dragged straight up to the surface, but that didn’t really matter compared to the water in his lungs. She couldn’t do much about it in the middle of the ocean—a quick healing spell, keep his heart beating, but she couldn’t hold him up _and_ pound the water from his chest.

She didn’t owe this man anything. This boy, really, for all that his hair grew as pale as the stone of his dream-city. The Lady deep below, her, Vex owed a debt. All she asked were a few simple things.

Percy’s little fishing boat was nowhere in sight so Vex raced him to shore, far more efficiently than he had tugged at her as he drowned. She took care to keep his head above the waves.

A rock met her first, standing jaggedly half a mile out from the beach, and thank all the gods and certainly _not_ Vex’s patron, because her heart was clenching and stuttering in her chest like there was a hook in it, dragging her back out to sea. Vex ignored the pain and tucked her catch into an alcove on the rock, and pulled off his water-clogged shirt to get a better purchase for pumping the water from his lungs. It was—it was an incredibly stupid, pointless thing to do, and Vex found herself crying long before Percy, still not even conscious, finished coughing up the sea. He barely even _wanted_ to live; it was obvious in the brittle, bitter cloud-lining of every blurred thought. She should leave, at least; answer the draw back to the watery grave she made, and no one needed to know she had spared this one life.

She curled against him instead, fending off with her tail the waves that would pull him back into the water. Tried to sing another healing charm, and lost it in her own sobs just because his hair was white and short where Vax’s was long and dark, and couldn’t anybody keep their damn family together in the world?

It took her a moment to notice when his heart sped up. His breathing hitched, his thoughts and emotions started churning. (Her song was still woven tight about his soul; she could feel it pulsing.) She pulled back, still pressing his shoulders safe against the rock, and became suddenly self-conscious of her own stupid tears.

“Sorry.” She wiped her eyes. “Gods, I’m such a shit siren. Can’t even drown one sad, little—”

She’d drowned quite a lot of sad little men, really, but none sad like Percy. None who felt so utterly lost, staring back at her with bewildered blue eyes, a sunburn on his nose, and tears running down his cheeks that she didn’t think he realized were there.

“Sorry,” Vex repeated helplessly. Because she tried to drown him, because she wasn’t his sister after all, because life sucked and fucking _somebody_ should apologize for it. “I just—”

She shook her head. Water sprayed everywhere (Trinket used to do that.) She swallowed back tears and fought the urge to bury her face back in Percy’s shoulder.

Her words came out choked with sobs anyway. “I really miss my brother, too.”

It was the worst excuse ever for nearly drowning someone. Or saving them. Whatever.

Then Percy— _Percival_ , now that he wasn’t enmeshed in memories of his family, but Vex didn’t think she could go back to that—did the most unusual thing yet. Pink with surprise at his own actions, he cupped her face in one shaking hand and wiped at her tears with his damp thumb, and tentatively asked, “Can I help?”


	3. Scene: The Highwayman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Told'ja I knew where Vax is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended listening for this chapter: [ "When A River Forms"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mxVnOLEdKw), Murray Gold, _Doctor Who_ Series 6 soundtrack.

Vax didn’t usually go for guys—or girls—who looked like they were one good rainstorm away from washing to nothing. Pinched cheeks, ragged clothing, walking alone on a bumpy country road through a speck of a forest on the outskirts of a nowhere town…these were the signs of someone it wasn’t worth the effort to rob. Hell, these were the signs of someone it was just plain mean to rob, like, what sort of asshole stole from someone who was already down to their very last copper?

Well, Vax, if there was no one else in sight and he was down to his very _zero_ copper. He was only a little less scruffy than the approaching traveller. But he was still _less_ scruffy, had at least a dozen coppers left, and he’d go into Stillben and steal from someone better, if it got worse.

But this guy…was sketchy. Thin and weatherbeaten, yeah; alone and carrying nothing but a knapsack big enough to hold maybe a loaf of bread and a change of raggedy clothes. But he walked like he owned the road, posture straight out of the highest Syngorn courts. His hair was a dashing snow-white, which was just weird. He was keeping an eye on the trees on either side of him, but like a curious scholar, not anyone expecting trouble. The only weapon in sight was a fishing knife on his hip.

Vax figured wizard, possibly under an illusion but probably not with that hair, with the side chance of naïve human lordling suffering the delusion that a peasant’s outfit was enough to hide his obnoxiously aristocratic bearing. Either way, there was definitely something more interesting than clothes and lunch in that sack.

(Maybe a real wizard, one clever enough to travel incognito like magic-users always seemed too full of themselves to do, could help him. Could scry, at least; could get Vax back to the water, could—)

Vax blinked. The strains of a lullaby slipped from his mind with the rustle of leaves in the day’s light wind. The man with white hair was another hundred yards up the road than he’d been, just a few trees from the one Vax had picked to spy from.

Shit, he thought he’d gotten better at this.

Vax slid stealthily down from his perch and shoved his partner forward at the shoulder.

“Go, Trink!” he whispered. “Do your dopey bear thing, and I’ll get him from behind.”

Trinket bumped him back with a wide, toothy yawn, which Vax figured he could either take as a comment on the last-minute plan or a real demonstration of initiative on the ‘dopey bear thing.’ Either way, Trinket started ambling forward, so it was on.

Vex would have loved their little con. Vax couldn’t believe they’d never thought of it before. She would have fussed about Trinket of course, but really, he was the star of the show, and had only gotten shot at like five times, in just under three years. (Two years, ten months, and sixteen days.)

Plus, Vax never got tired of the expression on people’s faces when a bear wandered out of the woods and plopped down on the road like it had decided, completely out of the blue, that this was the ideal spot for a quick rest. Sometimes they shrieked. Sometimes they just stared. One small party had decided, after five minutes’ furious discussion that Vax didn’t interrupt because it was hilarious, that clearly Trinket was some sort of guardian spirit of this little patch of woods, demanding a toll to pass. They’d just handed him their gold. It was a _little_ understandable—he was sitting on his haunches and staring at them, not really normal behavior for a bear. Still, it had taken several additional minutes for Vax to get a handle on his silent, hysterical laughter, and communicate via wild gesture from the trees that Trinket should sweep the offering to the side and let them pass. Somehow the group of earnest halflings remained oblivious the entire time. (Vex would have _loved_ it.)

Snobby Maybe-Wizard was the stop-and-stare sort. But only for a moment. Then he set his jaw and started moving forward again, slowly and cautiously, with one hand out like Trinket was going to sniff it like a dog. Vax smirked. Maybe this one had heard about the Most Esteemed Bear Spirit who demanded gold in tribute from those who would pass his inviolate woods.

Or he was from that bandit camp from a couple months back, or had heard about it. Or he was another one like that warlock with the damn Dominate Beasts spell. That had been…bad.

That was why it was a two-part con. Trinket provided the big furry distraction, and Vax snuck up from behind and put a dagger to the customer’s neck, and a hand over their mouth in case of magic-user. Or started throwing knives from afar, in case of larger parties, but single travellers were a piece of cake.

“Hey,” he said as Snobby Maybe-Wizard froze. Vax’s blade pressed against his throat, sharp enough to draw a pale line without nicking the skin. “Drop the bag.”

Snobby dropped the bag. Vax kicked it off to the side. It made clinking noises both times, but not ones that sounded like coin, which was disappointing. Vax would hold out for cool magic stuff, though.

(He carefully didn’t hold out for anything else.)

He jerked his head for Trinket to join them. The bear lumbered up obediently.

“I’m going to investigate that,” Vax told his captive, pointing his foot at the bag, “which means I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth, and my knife away from your throat. Instead, if you make a move I don’t like, my bear is going to eat you. Got it?”

Snobby nodded very slightly. It wasn’t like a wizard, or a nobleman or just a weirdo with white hair, would help with anything for any other reason, anyway.

“Cool.”

Vax skipped away, drawing the man’s fishing knife as he went. Trinket loomed menacingly at Snobby’s other side.

Snobby looked back and forth between them, and raised his hands in the universal _I’m unarmed_ gesture. But he didn’t look any sort of scared or nervous.

“Well, that was easier than I’d expected,” he drawled.

Vax still had his dagger ready, and the fish knife to boot. “What was—”

He was interrupted by a sudden armful of white-haired aristocrat. He wrapped around Vax like a bony boa constrictor, the most unexpected, fierce, _desperate_ hug Vax had received in…(two years, ten months, sixteen days.)

For a moment, Vax was too surprised to do anything but let it happen. And it was…not uncomfortable. Warm. Little awkward, because Snobby was nearly a full head taller than Vax, so he got to bury his face in Vax’s hair but Vax’s face was pretty much mashed into Snobby’s shoulder.

Little awkward because they’d _never met before in Vax’s life_.

Vax shoved him off. hard, back into Trinket’s flank. The bear growled in confusion. Snobby blinked some sort of vacancy from his eyes, and flushed pink.

“What the hell was that?” Vax demanded.

“I-I’m sorry,” Snobby stammered. He made no effort to stop leaning on Trinket. “I think…”

He brought a hand to his head like it ached, or maybe like he meant to straighten glasses he didn’t have, and frowned like a man poking a loose tooth with his tongue. “I think your sister _really_ wanted me to hug you.”

“What.”

“Ah, I should—” He brought his posture back to absurdly proper and stuck out one hand. “My name is Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III. You are Vax’ildan, yes? Yes. And this is obviously Trinket.” He patted the bear respectfully.

The way he answered himself suggested he wasn’t used to having other conversation partners. Vax stared at him, blade ready in case of some trick, and furiously ignored the “soothing” earworm he’d been stuck with for two years, ten months, and sixteen days. “ _What_.”

“Your sister, Vex’ahlia, saved me from downing a couple days ago, and sent me to find you.”


	4. March for the Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys do science! Kinda. An experiment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended listening for this chapter: [ "The Life and Death of Amy Pond"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0e4dbvBS9c), Murray Gold, Doctor Who Series 5 Soundtrack (the closest approximation of Vex's song for Vax that I can come up with.)

Half an hour later, they were still standing in the middle of the road, if this dusty, rock-strewn path through meager woods deserved that epithet.

“But you’re _sure_ she’s all right? Overall? She doesn’t look—”

“She didn’t seem to be injured, unfed, or tired in any particularly literal sense.” Percy ticked the points off on his fingers, repeating himself for at least the third time. “Her hair was supernaturally clean and she moved with perfect grace. It caused her heartburn to come within half a mile of shore, but otherwise she appeared healthy in every respect, and reports herself as such, and there was no other consequence that I could see to her saving me. I suspect she’s suffering considerable guilt, though she wouldn’t talk about it, and she’s definitely lonely, and misses you and Trinket a great deal.”

He gave the bear a comforting pat at that, because…it seemed like the right thing to do. The bear didn’t respond, just continued laying beside them in the dust, where he had settled down when Vax’ildan had been five minutes into this little interrogation with no sign of stopping. He did appear to be paying attention to the conversation, however.

(There was an odd smugness in Percy’s mind, a film floating over his thoughts. The echo of the whisper of a woman’s musical voice saying proudly, _Of course he can understand you. He’s a very clever bear_.)

Vax’ildan was pacing, in such a tight radius that it was almost a circle. ( ** _Vax_** _, mine, us, always, ohpleaseplease **please**_.)

“I know that rock. I could get to that rock. Hell, Trinket could get to that rock.” Vax put his face in his hands. “I just can’t…”

“Ah…Vex’ahlia did say she’d attempted some sort of charm to keep you away.” It felt like a terribly awkward thing to ask. “I take it that’s still in effect?”

“Yes.” In half a second, Percy's collar was twisted in the half-elf’s fist. “But you. You’re alive. You met Vex and she let you go and nothing bad happened, no storm or sea-hag or whatever.”

It felt like a terribly pointless thing to ask, too—the desperation was rawly obvious in Vax’s voice, in his bloodshot (tear-torn) eyes and unkempt…everything. Hair ragged and clothing worse, once dark and now just dirty. If he could have been with his sister, he obviously would have.

Percy could relate.

“None whatsoever,” he apologized.

Vax’s breath hitched, but he didn’t let go of Percy’s collar. “But she got you, too, so you can—you can hear her? She’s seeing through you?”

Loss and _need_ raced through Percy’s entire frame, and he dug his nails into his palms to keep them at his side. Fought to keep his expression neutral, to not lean into Vax’s touch like the siren’s twin was a bed at the end of a long day (week, month, years.)

“It’s more like an…impulse,” he said slowly. “I’m not sure I noticed until I saw you, and, ah…”

“Hugged me.”

“Yes. In retrospect, it obviously wasn’t me, and I’m fairly certain I can tell what’s her desire and what’s mine.” He stared fixedly at a point somewhere over Vax’s left shoulder. “She would really like to hug you again, right now.”

Vas stared at him for a long moment, then dropped his shirt and stepped back. “That’d be weird.”

“I agree.” Percy kept himself still, except for one hand that seemed to insist on stroking Trinket’s back like a nervous tic.

“But she know what’s going on here? Through you?”

“I can only assume.”

Vax bent over to scratch the bear’s ears. Trinket leaned into it with a loud snuffle. The half-elf glanced back up at Percival, then closed his eyes. He looked like he was in pain.

“I love you, Stubby.”

Percy’s eyes watered, which was…terribly inconvenient. It made his vision even worse. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d told any of his siblings any such thing—Julius, perhaps, the night before his wedding? A day’s march south and back towards the sea, he was certain Vex’ahlia was sobbing on the waves—had been for half an hour, now. They were mostly her tears.

He used his meager cotton sleeve to wipe his eyes, and didn’t speak until he had his voice back under control.

“It–It is entirely mutual.”

There was a watery snort from the back of his mind, reflected in a twist of Vax’s lips.

“How does your enchantment manifest?” Percy asked hastily, before anything got more emotional.

Vax’s fist tightened in Trinket’s ruff. The change in subject clearly did little for him. “I can’t go back to the ocean.”

“How, exactly?”

That earned an eye roll, an expression with which Percival was entirely familiar. Even Mother and Father—

Few people showed much interest when he began to approach a matter scientifically. Percy was used to it.

(Except—)

“I’ll show you. Gimme a sec.”

Vax’s voice wrenched him, thankfully, away from his memories. “Wha—how? Really?”

“Yeah, if I don’t think about it too hard. It won’t work, anyway. Trink, watch ‘im.”

He disappeared. Percy would have panicked, but Trinket seemed unaffected, save to yawn and clamber slowly to his feet. And Vex’ahlia…

It had seemed like a good idea yesterday, to offer her what help he could. In retrospect, he had been completely ensorcelled. Still was. Now that he was aware of it, he could feel her influence pressed against his thoughts as surely as her hands had held him in the water. Gone was the waking dream of his family by the Sun Tree, but the lulling mental haze remained.

At least he was being useful to someone. Honestly, standing on this nowhere road, working a knot out of a grizzly bear’s thick fur, Percy felt sharper than he had in…at least a year and a half. It had been winter, and winter again sometime, and now it was muggy enough that it could only be late summer.

“All right, let’s go.”

With barely a flicker of movement from the trees, Vax reappeared, a pack and sleeping roll over his shoulders. He was already yards down the road, and didn’t look back. Trinket abandoned his grooming to lumber after him, and Percy hastened to catch up.

“Where?”

“’Bout half a mile.”

“What happens then?”

“I might try to kill you again.”

“What?”

Vax shrugged, and continued to not look at him. Well, okay. Two could play at that game.

Or not, because Percy had an assignment here. Or…something. He wasn’t fighting any impulses from Vex’ahlia, now, aside from a general desire to grab her brother and not let go. He couldn’t tell if the additional curiosity was her or himself.

He fell back behind Trinket, to keep an eye on the pair of them without bothering anyone. The trees gave away to rolling land too flat to be called hills, interspersed with flats too boggy to be called fields. The road was just as shabby, uneven with ruts and gravel. Vax walked it with typical half-elven grace, though by the look of him, he might simply not be used to proper, paved roads.

For nearly half an hour they walked in silence towards the sea, as the land grew increasingly flat and marshy. When Percy judged they were nearly within sight of the water—still miles off, but over the next hill, likely visible—Vax started humming, in the manner of a man trying to drown out a noise in his ears.

Then he veered sideways, first to the edge of the road and then straight off, into the coastal fen. Trinket’s shoulders slumped as he followed loyally. Vax didn’t seem to notice—the dejected bear, nor his own change in direction. He strode with the same false jauntiness as before, looking this way and that, sometimes up at the clouded sky.

Percy jogged a couple steps to catch up, and get a look at the man’s face. Vax’s eyes were glazed, and bright with unshed tears. He didn’t seem to notice Percy walking so close. He just kept walking, curving slowly away from the coast, feet moving in time to his disjointed hum.

Vax didn’t seem to be hitting most of the notes, but recognition grew on Percy anyway, with uncomfortable concurrent waves of regret and relief. Only the memory was his own: the song Percy knew had invited him to dive, dream, relax and let the water rush in… Here, every rise and fall were reversed, every crescendo soft and slow and every descendo roaring up in enjoinment to _go_ , begone, forget, _live._

( _I’m sorry_ , whispered the siren, her notes and will still wound through his own. And, _Please take care of him._ )

His hand was already moving to tug Vax’s arm for her.

Vax kept walking. The ground was getting marshier and marshier. They would start to get stuck, soon.

“Vax’ildan.” Percy dragged on his arm harder this time, for a moment taken back to feeble entreaties to get his older brother off the training court and into a room with books. Vax, he pulled back towards the sea.

There was a dagger in Percy’s arm, staining the thin shirt instantly red. He yelped. It was not dignified.

Vax woke from his stupor, at least, dagger back in hand. He blinked away the clouds in his eyes. the water spilled onto his cheeks instead. 

“Ah, hell.”

Trinket nosed at Vax’s arm with a concerned expression. “Groarr?”

“I’m okay, buddy.” Vax patted the bear on the shoulder, glanced at the dagger and then back at Percy.

“You’re fine, too,” he said shortly. “I’ll grab you a bandage.”

“Thank you,” said Percy, and pretended not to notice that Vax took an extra moment from rummaging through his bag to wipe the tears from his face. The scrap of cloth he tossed back was moderately clean, at least.

Percy started to muse aloud as he tied the makeshift bandage around his wound. “So, you can’t go closer than about two miles to the sea, and you’ll lash out if anyone tries to take you. I assume you also—”

Percy looked up to find that Vax had slipped away again, one arm over Trinket’s wide back. How even the bear moved stealthily, Percy had no idea.

He didn’t bother catching up until they were nearly back to the woods. He could respect a man’s desire to brood in silence. Even if the man’s sister was pressing on him to seize man and bear alike and never let them go. Percy did his best to push her away.

“So, you lash out at anyone who tries to help you,” he repeated, as the once more entered the trees. “I assume you also can’t tell anyone of your problem, if they don’t already know, nor get help in any practical manner?”

“Yeah.”

“But you can plan for it, privately, so long as you don’t seize the initiative or seriously consider the possibility of success.”

“Yeah.”

The reticence was going to get annoying eventually, but for now, Percy maintained the lack of eye contact, instead scanning the ground for bumps, or better yet, something to serve as a walking stick. Gods but he was tired. He wasn’t sure he remembered not being tired, anymore.

“Have you tried—”

“I got a guy to knock me out and tie me to Trinket,” Vax said shortly. “I woke up halfway back to Stillben with a couple grains of sand in my hair, both shoulders dislocated, and the world’s most freaked-out bear.”

“…Right.”

An old beech branch, almost entirely broken off its withering tree, would do, Percy decided. It was too short for a real cane, and stout, but it would serve. He broke it off with a snap.

“I’ve read some mythology—a lot of mythology, I guess—and tales of the fae. But I’ve never read of siren magic working like this. I haven’t read much of sirens at all, I suppose—they’re rather rare, and it was—”

Ludwig, who always liked the real adventure stories. Vesper, too, paperbacks smuggled into her room between tomes of wizardry and proper, ladylike poetry. Rip-roaring tales of knights and fair damsels, pirates and paladins. Magic and romance and plenty of dramatic sword fights.

“I, I preferred—”

Ludwig had been nearly bisected, when Percy saw his corpse. He didn’t know about Vesper.

“That is, it’s peculiar,” he finished lamely. Closed his eyes, tapping ahead with the stick like a blind man. Opened them again, watching Vax from behind, because he didn’t want to be left alone in the dark. The half-elf continued to deliberately ignore his chatter.

In his life, Percy had learned of two ways to knock a man unconscious. Well, three, but he had never mastered the hand-to-hand training master’s hard uppercut. Easier, if less careful, was the method of the Captain of his family’s Guard: swing something hard at the back of their head, and don’t miss. Sir Kerrion had favored his sword hilt.

“Well, I suppose the only solution is to get you to a cleric,” he said, still idly. “It’s obviously a curse of some sort, but I think it’s best—”

(Third was from a traveling doctor, and “You see, Percival,” she had murmured, “If I press just _here_ —” Her nail dug into the soft node behind his ear and he _screamed_ as the pain shot down his neck, his spine, his every inch of nervous tissue. She’d smiled as she held him still. “You’ll fall unconscious is four, three, two…”)

Percy picked the traitor’s lesson, and swung with all his might. The beechwood splintered, dry and old, but not before it hit. Vax crumpled with a satisfying thump.

“—if you’re entirely unaware,” Percy finished self-indulgently. And dropped to his knees, at Vex’ahlia’s frantic bidding, to check that her brother was otherwise unharmed.

So the snap of Trinket’s snarling maw missed his head by inches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fact: D&D sirens don't lure people like Greek mythology sirens; they mostly just scream fit to destroy eardrums. So I'm partly basing this off a vampire's Charm/Dominate Person effects, and partly making it up to suit my whims and plot.
> 
> Constructive criticism welcome (hint hint please)!


	5. The Druid's Gavotte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A druid mediates between man and beast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended listening for this chapter: [Gavotte by J.S. Bach](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avtLkIzTJt4). (Sorry for the delay! Stumped on chapter length mid-scene.)

**The Druid’s Gavotte**

Keyleth was not avoiding the town of Stillben. She wasn’t! She was simply taking a circuitous route to reach it, skirting the K’Tawi Marsh and walking lazily through this little forest, with trees so much softer and straighter than the stalwart, wind-bent pines of Zephra’s peaks. Which was why she’d left, of course—to see new plants, and also people and places, like Stillben, which wasn’t even a very big city, which was why it was a good place to start and she definitely wasn’t avoiding it like a scared little girl rather than a young woman on her Aramente with an exploration-ready pack on her back and the hopes of her people on her shoulders. She would reach the town before it got properly dark, anyway.

It was nice to run into the bear. Or, to get unexpectedly growled at by the bear, unexpectedly because this really was a very  _ small _ forest, little more than a particularly large field of trees (she was pretty sure it was a particularly large field. Also on the list of things Keyleth hadn’t seen much of at home: non-terrace farming.) The surrounding marsh wasn’t really the place for grizzly bears, either, and his looks proved it: he was well-brushed but too skinny, wrinkled around the eyes like a young adult bear shouldn't be.

She froze politely, crouched and bared her neck and let him see what she was doing with her hands, that she didn’t have any hunting weapons or even claws—it wasn’t her forest, after all, and it might be his. When he didn’t do anything but watch her and growl again, more softly this time, Keyleth twitched her fingers in a long-familiar motion and incanted a few words under her breath. She let out the softest sigh of satisfaction as the faint flutter of warm power curled up from the earth, from her toes to her heart to her lips, and carried her thoughts out to towards the bear.

_ Hello _ , she said, more mentally than aloud—the thought of greeting, and willing friendship and mean-no-harm. But she gave a growling  _ Hrrr _ of her own, the sounds coming naturally with the spell, because that was always easier.  _ What are you doing here? _

_ Guarding my kin _ . The bear snapped his teeth for emphasis, looming through the slim, dusk-lit trees.  _ You can keep going _ .

_ Oh!  _ Keyleth twisted her head and squinted around him, but didn’t see any other bears. The brown one with whom she was speaking shifted to block her sight anyway.

_ Are they cubs?  _ she asked eagerly. And then, trying to tamp down her obvious excitement and doing just fine because the follow-up was such a sad thought:  _ Are they hurt?  _ She fumbled in the pouch at her belt for the few spellcasting supplies she’d left home with.  _ I can help. I can do some healing magic. _

Only a very little, really, and she didn’t have much in the way of supplies, but healing spells were kind of her default for what to prepare every day. If she wasn’t skinning her knees or chipping a tooth, she was probably falling out of a tree and breaking her clavicle again. That had been  _ really  _ embarrassing, even in the long series of things Keyleth had been embarrassed by in her life. Totally unbefitting a future Headmaster of the Air Ashari. Her dad and everyone had been really nice about it, of course, but. Healing spells were the way to go. And she could help people with them, too!

The bear gave her a long, considering stare, and, encouraged by his lack of further snapping, Keyleth stepped forward, hands out in a friendly, non-threatening way.

Then something rustled overhead, quite loud, leaves and cloth and the yelp of someone nearly falling out of a tree. Keyleth looked up and the trees were full and green, this late in the summer, and the sky was getting dark, but that only made it easier to see the pale young man with white hair. He  _ did _ look like he’d nearly fallen, was sitting on a branch that looked only  _ just _ big enough to support him, and clinging to the trunk like he was painfully aware of that fact.

The bear reared up and snarled up him, gnashing jaws just a few inches shy of the man’s dangling feet. He—the human—promptly drew them up, clutching his knees like the world’s most awkward squirrel, without the bushy tail and cute cheeks. Like a very awkward, skinny person in a tree, basically.

“I’m sorry!” he shouted down to the bear, in a perfunctory way that suggested it wasn’t his first apology. Then he turned his attention to Keyleth, and called, “I say! Miss, were you just talking to Trinket—that is, this bear? Are you a magic-user? Could you explain to him that I truly am on a mission from his mother, and I mean neither him nor his uncle any harm—in fact, I am  _ trying _ to help.”

He glared down at Trinket the bear with, still, all the dignity of a righteously chittering squirrel, and Keyleth put her fist against her mouth to stop her giggle.

“Um, that’s kind of a lot? You’re helping his uncle and…” She frowned. “How are you helping his mother if you can’t even speak to her? If you can’t even talk to, um…”

“Trinket,” he said promptly, and sighed, looking very much like he’d like to lean back if only there was something to lean back on. “It’s a rather long story, I’m afraid.”

His voice was odd, high and drawling, like the rare merchants who trekked up to Zephra with the very fanciest clothes, who paid the most money for the most valuable magical items her people sometimes made. But even moreso. Keyleth thought she could probably fit an entire incantation in the time it took him to say “rather.”

_ He attacked Vax! _ , Trinket growled.  _ It has been many hours and he has not woken! My Vex would not have sent him to do that! _

“Vax? Vex?” Keyleth inched forward—and tripped, and stumbled back as Trinket spun on her with a protective snarl. But she saw what she had tripped over: another young man, a half-elf, this one with long dark hair and only slightly less shabby clothes. Also pale, but it looked even less healthy on him, and he wasn't breathing hard. By the marks on his arm and the ground nearby, someone with sharp teeth and no opposable thumbs had done their best to gently drag him here from the road.

“Oh, um, Vex?”

“Vax,” Trinket and the man in the tree chorused. 

“And I am Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo the Third,” the human added, and, urgently: “If you can, please don't wake him up, or we’ll never get him to a cleric.”

Keyleth frowned. ‘Many hours’ was a bad amount of time to be unconscious. She dropped to her knees and glanced up at Trinket. “May I? I promise I won’t harm him.”

The bear backed up with a reluctant growl. Keyleth lit one of her hands on fire for light and carefully tugged Vax onto her lap with the other. It didn’t take a moment’s searching to find the tender lump on the back of his head, but his breathing barely hitched when she accidentally poked it with her thumb. But he was breathing. He just wasn’t waking, even when she sent a pulse of warm magic through her hand.

“I think we do need to take him to a cleric,” Keyleth said uneasily. “I don’t- I don’t really know that much about healing yet-” She squinted back up the man in the tree, whom she thought she might call ‘Percy’ for simplicity’s sake. He was dressed more like an austere gardener than the brigands she’d sometimes read about, and looked like he needed about four square meals in him before he could be a threat to anyone. “Why did you hit him?”

“He’s cursed. I need to get him to someone to fix it, but the spell includes him not letting himself get help.” Legs dangling once more, like a child at a too-tall desk, he bit his lip with relatable anxiety. “Can you? Help him? With a curse, or- I’m not a medical doctor, but…”

He trailed off with a wince as Keyleth shook her head. 

“A curse...he got stuck as a half-elf?” she asked.

_ No, he is always this shape. He is very difficult to keep safe. But Vex said to, when she sent us away.  _ Trinket licked up the side of Vax’s still face, sounding as heartbroken as it was possible for a bear to be.

“No, Trinket is adopted,” Percy explained. “I told you, it’s a rather long story.” He kicked his legs. “Might I come down, now?”

Keyleth gnawed on her cheek as they both looked at her. This was being a leader, right? Making decisions, taking charge. Even if she didn’t feel like she had a single clue what she was doing, much less knew the right decision to make. 

Something tugged on her hand. She looked down to see she’d twisted some of Vax’s long, greasy hair around her fingers until they were pulling against his scalp. He still hadn’t woken.

“Okay,” she said, and with another steadying breath, “Okay.” 

She freed her hand with only a stifled twinge of guilty awkwardness, and doused her other hand and stood, lifting Vax upright with her. It was easy—he was very slight. 

“Okay,” she said again, determinedly. “Percy, you should get down, and Trinket you should let him, yell at him later, and- can you carry your, um, uncle? Until we get into town? Then we’ll find a real healer and...figure out what happens next.”


End file.
